Touch-sensitive input devices, such as touch panels, are being increasingly employed in user interfaces in a wide variety of electronic consumer products, such as phones, music players, tablet computers and cameras, as well as household appliances, electronic office equipment, automobiles and industrial machinery.
In many applications, the touch panel is integrated into a display to form a touchscreen. Thus, in these applications, the touch panel needs to be transparent and so touch panel electrodes must be transparent. Therefore, the electrodes are made from a transparent conductive material, such as indium tin oxide. However, such transparent conductive materials are usually expensive and deposited using special equipment.